Every year it is ha been a tradition to take my kids to a park on Clark County to take their yearly portraits for their birthday. This year was no different, and while there are many beautiful places to take kids portraits in Clark County, I almost always end up at the same park with this little one.

There used to be a great wooden fence here that we included in our photographs and helped show a progression of her growth as well. Unfortunately it seems to have fallen down over the last year so we had to improvise a bit. I actually really liked the natural arches of these bushes and the brighter light that hit her from behind.

I spent a little time getting her to give me a more natural smile and love this grouping of that process:

We also tried out a few other spots to photograph her. There are some tall grasses that light up from behind at sunset.

Every year these portrait sessions take a different form and it is fun to see if they are more like a lifestyle photography session or a mini portrait session. It is also fun to see how her personality comes out each year. I always take each session as a bit of a quest to get genuine personality.

Yesterday I hopped over to a park in Vancouver, Washington with my children to take some portraits. This little girls has grown up so fast and after having her 6th birthday I had to find the time to take her photograph to send portraits to her relatives and to mark her growth through the years. We have a tradition of taking her photograph every year at the same park and it is fun to see her change!

After finishing the quick mini shoot yesterday I decided to take my photograph editing work to a coffee shop in Camas and work to get the basics of lightroom figured out. I had previously had a Photoshop elements program on my Macbook, but after that died I was forced to switch to Creative Suite. I found that there are some things that are a lot easier in Lightroom like if you have a photograph with a very similar exposure you can use the same setting from your last edit just by clicking ctrl-alt-v. I almost always ended up making some other minor adjustments, but this saved me some time.

So now that my youngest is off to school full time I have been thinking a lot more about what I am going to “do” with my time. I have been thinking about selling my landscape photographs on Etsy, starting to do birth photography, and doing more maternity and infant photography. I would love to do some traveling and take photographs on the road, i.e. will travel for work. 😉 I am also playing around with setting up a new blog if I do I will make sure to highlight that here.

Of course I will continue to spend time working on Brasier Law’s website and general online presence and being available to my kids. So for now I am free to explore my options and take landscape, close up, and portrait photographs as I see fit. 🙂

WordPress was kind enough to send me a summary of my year here at Emilia Brasier Photography. They gave me all kinds of numbers and so I thought I would highlight a few of them as a round up of the year.

This year for my kids Christmas photo shoot I set up a little hot cocoa treat, complete with really lovely marshmallows, and tasty and really special candy canes. This was a giant treat for the kids. I didn’t end up with pictures that really completed my vision, but they were fun to take and the kids were excited and full of joy during the whole thing.

A few weeks ago my grandparents were visiting from the east coast and so we headed out to the coast on a wonderful sunny day. Probably as nice as it ever gets at the Oregon coast in fact. We also took a side trip to a little garden called the Connie Hansen Garden in Lincoln City and I took a few quick photos of the flowers. My son was getting rambunctious and so I invited him to take a few as well. We talked a bit about which lens he would like to use (did he want to get really really close to the things he took a picture of or be further away). He decided he wanted to be a further away.

Of course my daughter was also invited to take a turn with the camera and we talked about how to make sure she was pointing at the things she wanted in the picture and how to focus the camera. After my daughter finished I asked my mom to take a few pictures but I have to say she was distracted by my son the whole time because he was so anxious to start taking more pictures. So she only tried a few times and was using strange equipment (my camera not hers).

It was fun to see what each of us spotted and how we decided to use the lens that I had available. There was a lot of color as it is spring here so we mostly took pictures of the flowers but my Mom and son took pictures of people too. 🙂

We finally had time all together with a camera to do another inter-generational photography post.

I hope that you enjoy the different perspectives that were found between the youngest and the oldest. Enjoy the color that is beginning to get into full swing here on the west coast of the USA.

The first set of photos was taking by my son:

This second set was taking by my daughter:

The next set of photos were taking by my Mom:

Finally the photos I took. Next time I should let my Mom spring a session like this on me:)

When my son was born I took photos of him constantly. I think I had ten thousand photographs of him during his first year. Ten thousand! I did really like have a photo every week on the day of the week he was born and every month.

He loves to ham it up for the camera, he loves to hold the camera, instruct others one how they should stand, and take the photo himself.

Oddly he does not much like cooperate the way that I would like him to for a birthday portrait. At least not quite the same way he did when he was six months old and would sit on a bench, gaze up at me with his big blue eyes, and give me the biggest smile ever.

We took these photos at a near by park. The two weeks leading up to his birthday were chilly but in the afternoons the light had been perfectly shinning on this tree with yellow leaves. The leaves had fallen on the ground and created a carpet of yellow. I kept thinking oh man I should just take the pictures today, it is not raining, they have not come to rake the leaves. Unfortunately, I waited.

On his birthday it was chilly, raining, and when we got to the park…the leaves had been cleaned up. He refused to put on pants and then was way too cold. He switched between acting grumpy and goofy, my daughter was hanging to my legs the whole time trying to pull me to the car. Rain was getting all over my lens…overall not my favorite experience.

Oh well. The pictures do show his personality and I think they will actually show off the general mood of the day better than perfect pictures.

Today is the start of a new project that involves myself, my 5 year old son (AB), 2 year old daughter (AK), and my Mom (Grandma). We are going to do an inter-generational photography learning project that will aim to help all of us learn more about photography, have fun taking pictures, and see what cuteness occurs.

Both of my children are very interested in cameras and whenever we (my mom or I) have one out they want to get their hands on it. As I have talked about previously my Mom was the biggest teacher of photography that I had and most of the learning occurred while on hikes or during other outings.

We are going to have “challenges” where each of us goes out and takes photos of something specific and then submits a photo for this blog. Due to time constraints this will most likely occur on a monthly basis or possibly every two weeks.

I plan to have the theme of each project be something super simple that even my 2 year old can understand and then to use that time to talk about other concepts in photography (very simply), much more of that will happen with my 5 year old but I did want to include my daughter because she already shows such an interest in the camera. My hope is that my Mom will be able to be there while we are shooting but if not she will submit photos separately.

I thought it would be fun to see the world through 4 people with such different placement in the world. So here is our first batch of photos. There is a caption on each on to show who took it. (Except mine).

My son took his photos with out much guidance from me this time while my daughter did have some help with placing the camera a good distance away for the lens that she was using (for the columbine photos).

So those labeled AK are taken by my 2 year old. AB were taken by my 5 year old. NO label taken by myself. Jennifer/Grandma taken by my Mom.

A Short Bio

I grew up in the Pacific North West (Oregon) and attended Lewis & Clark College where I graduated with my BA in Psychology. I attended some graduate school for Clinical Psychology before coming to a turning point in life. I am a mother, wife, photographer, nature lover, and I work as the director of online management for my husbands Portland and SW Washington family law firm www.brasierlaw.com
I have an additional, though rarely updated, blog on parenting, crafts, food, and fun www.bloggingemilia.blogspot.com

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